Do you feel safer with Uncle Joe or mad Donald the bully? That’s not a close choice. Donald calls for support from the Klan, the Proud Boys, Nazis, white supremacists, and invites them to bring guns to the polls to intimidate the rest of us and heaven knows what else – steal the ballots? That’s not a world that you and I can be safe in. It beggars all the policy issues because it promises active hostility toward many of us with all the lethal power of government.
Defeating the bully in the White House isn’t all many of us want from elections. We want environmental action, reforms to bring police and prosecutors under control, nominations to bring the courts back to the side of justice after the Roberts Court gave the green light to all the abuses that squelched the Black vote in many states, tax policy that makes sense so that you and I don’t pay more taxes than billionaires like Donald Trump (who claims to be a billionaire) or Warren Buffet. Buffet had the grace to object.
Joe won’t get me all I want, though it isn’t clear anyone could. I’ve been working for equal rights since I graduated from law school, walked into the office of the NAACP in New York City and worked as a full-time, unpaid volunteer on their legal staff. Joe wasn’t my candidate in the primaries but the American people weren’t ready for her, which means we have work to do. That’s about building support within the party and the public, not about tearing the house down around us. Go for it in the primaries. Educate. Explain. Build. But in the general election, building for the future requires grace, teamwork and joining with other party members in expressions of mutual respect.
We could ask for purity if we had a parliamentary system in which minority voices get represented, not superseded by compromise candidates. But we have a presidential system and we have a person in the White House who is making clear the danger of a presidential system because of the way it can, in times like this, concentrate power.
Our system takes account of minorities in different ways. Some of us explained polarized voting to the courts. Voting is polarized when voters categorically shun candidates who take account of minority needs. Merely caring about a minority is too much. The minority is left with zero influence on the political system. Every harm done to minorities is applauded, leading to the most hateful policies. That, thank God, is not our system. When we were able to prove polarized voting, we often got courts to redesign voting districts so that minorities could elect candidates and get into legislatures. We are not in heaven and we have made mistakes but, yes, we’ve made progress.
I respect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders and others like them but they are supporting Joe. There is no path to success by way of Donald Trump.
Obama never got a free hand. Trump does because of the Nazis, the Proud Boys, the white supremacists, on groundwork laid by Gingrich and the Tea Party. No movement that could consistently defeat opposition candidates in primaries has taken over the Democrats. So Democratic leaders have to function as coalition builders. Build and prepare to flex our muscle in primaries. But electing the bully will cut off our democratic alternatives. He and his supporters have no respect for democracy and will do their best to close it off. They want to rule like slave-owners and tyrants.
Parties respect and cater to people they can get to the polls. Sitting elections out doesn’t convey protest. Politicians read it as no-shows, apathy, lack of interest, as people they don’t need to worry about. Let me make the point another way – the alt-wrong is terrified we’ll elect Biden and depose Trump. There’s a reason for that.
Constitutionalism and Democracy 